The clouds floated at eye level across the entire coliseum.

Every sponsor, every family seat, every observer with a paid position in the upper rows had one drifting in front of their face, a personal window into whatever triad they’d chosen to watch. Most of them were watching Class A. A few watched Class B. The ones who’d been doing this long enough watched everything at once and kept their faces neutral.

The noise of the coliseum was a specific kind of loud. Not cheering. More like a trading floor. Voices overlapping, people leaning across seats, pointing at their clouds, pulling the attention of whoever was next to them.

"Almonth just took down his third triad." A man in the sponsor section lowered his drink. "Class C. Three of them. He didn’t even redirect. Just walked through."

"I saw." The woman beside him didn’t look away from her cloud. "Calver handled the third one before Xavier reached him. They’re a clean unit."

"Clean." The man laughed once. "That boy doesn’t need a unit. The unit is there so the other teams feel like it’s fair."

Laughter from two seats over.

Across the row a heavyset sponsor was already writing something down. He hadn’t stopped writing since the first category started.

"Three kingdoms have standing interest," someone said behind him.

"Four," the heavyset man said without looking up. "Creslan formalized theirs this morning."

Silence for a moment.

Then: "Four kingdoms for a second year."

"Four kingdoms for that second year." He kept writing. "Different thing entirely."

A younger man two rows back leaned forward. "Think anyone gives him a real fight today?"

"In the first category?" The woman with the cloud snorted. "He’ll finish with the highest credit total and zero damage taken. Same as last year."

"He wasn’t in last year’s culmination."

"Exactly." She sipped her drink. "And nothing’s changed."

Mareth had his cloud angled toward Xavier’s triad. He’d had it there since the category started and hadn’t moved it. He was giving a running commentary to anyone within earshot and nobody within earshot had asked for it.

"Textbook suppression. You see how he moved through the left flank? The other two didn’t even need to reposition—"

He looked at Velion.

Velion’s cloud was facing a different direction entirely.

Mareth followed the angle.

North section. Dense canopy. A triad moving through dark terrain with the kind of pace that suggested they’d already found a rhythm.

Gold hair.

Mareth looked at it. Then at Velion.

"You’re watching Class F."

Velion said nothing.

"Xavier just took down a full Class C triad in under a minute and you’re watching Class F."

"I can see Xavier from here." Velion turned his ring once. "That one I need the cloud for."

Mareth looked at the gold-haired student moving through the forest. The way he positioned himself between his teammates and the treeline. The way his eyes moved — not reactive. Predictive.

"What’s their record so far?" Mareth asked.

"Two engagements. Two wins." Velion’s eyes didn’t move from the cloud. "First was a pack of Crawlers. Second was Class F unit. Both finished clean."

Mareth squinted at the cloud. "Class F students."

"Yes."

"Taking down other representatives."

"So far they’re one of two triads to have done it." Velion turned his ring once. "The other being Almonth."

Mareth looked at the cloud for a long moment. The gold-haired student crouched near a flat rock. Pulled something from under it. Stood back up without breaking pace.

"Hm," Mareth said.

Velion said nothing.

Three rows below the sponsor section a cluster of academy observers had been watching the same cloud for the past fifteen minutes.

"Only two triads have taken down other representatives so far." A young woman with a notepad. "Class A and Class F."

"Class F." The man beside her said it like he’d misheard.

"Class F. The Misfits." She tapped her notepad. "Two engagements. Zero losses."

The man looked at the cloud. Gold hair. Moving fast between the trees, one hand pressed against his shoulder.

"He looks familiar."

"Are you serious." The woman looked at him. "That’s the 34th Archmagus’s middle son."

"Vexis Lestilaut?"

"Yes."

"But he—" The man stopped.

"What."

He shook his head slowly. "Nothing. I just. I thought I heard something different about him."

The woman looked back at the cloud. "Well. Whatever you heard. He just overpowered three students simultaneously with a spike in his shoulder and made one of them forfeit by pressing his own relic stone."

The man was quiet.

"That family," he finally said.

"That family," she agreed.

"So being a lunatic runs in blood"

She kept writing.

Velja had his arms crossed and his chin up and he was grinning the way he grinned when things went the direction he’d decided they would go.

Welya sat beside him.

Her hands were in her lap. Her right fist was closed. She hadn’t uncrossed her legs since the first category started and she hadn’t looked away from her cloud once.

On it, Arthur pressed his shoulder and kept moving. His expression was flat and focused and completely unlike anything she’d seen on that face before and completely unlike anything she’d been told to expect from him.

She didn’t say anything.

Her fist tightened.

Four seats from the end of the foreign observer row a woman sat alone.

White hair. Green eyes. Her clothing was wrong for the season, thick black fabric, layered, buttoned to the throat, the cut of it foreign in a way that wasn’t any kingdom represented in the surrounding seats. Like the weather she’d dressed for was somewhere else entirely.

She hadn’t touched her drink.

Her cloud was pointed at the north section of the island. She’d moved it there when the first engagement footage came through on the replay system and she hadn’t moved it since.

She watched.

Her expression gave nothing.

[+1 RP]

Arthur blinked.

[+1 RP]

He looked at the notification. Dismissed it. It came back.

[Relevance accumulation active, passive gain per minute while observed]

His eyebrows went up.

People are watching me.

He thought about it for a second while stepping over a root cluster.

Is it because we took out the Class E triad?

He filed it and kept moving.

Theodore’s bellus shot out from under a tangle of roots ahead and came back with something silver between her teeth. She dropped it at Theodore’s feet without slowing down.

[+100 credits]

Arthur closed his left eye. His network spread through the dark ahead, feeling along the ground, mapping the weight and density of things beneath the soil.

There.

Twenty meters north. Two of them. One near a large flat rock sitting just under the surface. One wedged between two roots, deeper, denser.

He opened his eyes and adjusted direction without a word.

Kreasial looked at him. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

She looked at Theodore’s bellus.

She looked back at Arthur.

"You." She pointed. "You’ve found four. The rat found two." She gestured at the bellus, who did not acknowledge this. "I haven’t found anything since the first one! DAMNIT!."

"That’s rough," Arthur said.

"Since we crossed the river." The edge in her voice was getting sharper. "Zero. Nothing. While you two just—" She gestured broadly at the forest around them. "Wander around and things appear."

"It’s a talent."

"It is not a talent. You don’t even look. You close one eye like an idiot and then say this way and then there’s something there." She was keeping pace but her jaw was set. "Every single time. What is that. How are you doing that."

Arthur grinned and pointed at his own temple. "Masterful intuition."

"I will hit you."

"You won’t. We need me."

Kreasial made a sound that had no word attached to it.

Theodore’s bellus glanced up at her. Then moved slightly closer to Theodore’s ankle.

Arthur crouched at the flat rock and reached under it. Cold metal. Smooth edges. He pulled it out — a small carved disc, dark and heavy for its size.

He held it up without turning around.

[+100 credits]

[Class F Triad: Misfits total — 1,100 credits]

"Masterful intuition," Arthur said.

"I am going to—"

The ground moved.

Not an earthquake. Not thunder. Something underneath — a specific rolling pressure that came up through the soles of their boots and shifted the loose dirt in a slow wave outward from a point ahead. Then again. Closer this time.

Arthur’s shadow network screamed.

Something massive. Moving through the earth below his entire anchor field, pushing through the ground with a weight that displaced everything around it. He couldn’t shape what it was. Couldn’t get a clean read. Just the size of it — enormous, dense, wrong — moving upward.

The trees shook.

Roots snapped underground.

Then the ground split open.

It came up fast. Black and slick and enormous, the body of it thick as a carriage and lined with dark ridged segments, each one wet and glistening, moving in the coordinated horrible way. It cleared the root clusters. Cleared the treeline. Reared up with loose earth falling from its body in chunks that hit the ground like dropped stones.

Arthur stood there.

Looked at it.

"You gotta be kidding me."